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| UFLA Newsletter
James Yoder, President |
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Tom Mathews,
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| UFLA Newsletter
James Yoder, President |
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Tom Mathews,
Editor
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Click on any title in order to read that article, or just scroll down. |
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2000 ACTFL Delagate Assembly Foreign Language Enrollment in Utah |
AATG News NEH Opportunity |
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James Yoder |
| It looks as though we’ve made
it through that bottleneck in the school year: Thanksgiving, Christmas,
New Year, and for many of us, a one-day "job action." In addition to that
we have the end of one semester and the beginning of a new semester! I
almost can’t believe that we are already in February, and that it has been
three months since our UFLA Meeting was held at BYU.
As I reflect on our conference, I have to say that it was the best we have ever had. We had many great presentations and Dr. Clifford’s words as our Keynote Speaker were excellent. Our sessions were well-attended, something I tribute to both the diversity of our choices as well as the excellence of the presentations. We received many comments telling us how much you enjoyed the different sessions you attended. While I wasn’t able to visit all of the sessions, I did have the opportunity to visit many of them. Karl Powell and Patricia Hodge shared ideas on how we can make literature more meaningful to our students. Tricia Grantham helped us find a way to turn our "guilty pleasure" of Disney movies into an effective teaching strategy. Shauna Winegar shared with us her experiences as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher. Angie Terry and Sara Murdock shared with us some of their superb activities that we can use to get our students speaking in class. Nieves Knapp, who incidentally, was selected to represent us as "Best of Utah" at SWCOLT, shared with us ways to use media, mainly television commercials, in the classroom to illustrate different grammatical and vocabulary structures. Wanda Carasquillo had a well-attended session in which she demonstrated the different resources that UEN has for Foreign Language Teachers. Amy Kutzulis shared some of the activities that she uses to get her students speaking and laughing in the classroom. I heard many wonderful things about other sessions I was unable to attend. For the German teachers, Dr. Roland Meinert of the Goethe Institute was apparently a goldmine of information and materials and Eva Rodríguez Braña from the Embassy of Spain shared ways to use the Flamenco Dance in the classroom. Looking at all of these sessions and from the comments I received from many of you, I have come to one conclusion: Utah Foreign Language teachers are amazing! Many times we feel like we need scrounge the globe for ideas and techniques to use in our classrooms that will spark interest in our students. We dig through catalogs and textbooks for ideas, and we attend conferences and workshops out of state, when the whole time, we have excellent resources right here in Utah: our colleagues. I am continually impressed by the quality of teachers we have in Utah and the way that they put their heart and soul into teaching. I salute you all for the work that you do. I thank you for helping make our conference the success that it was and I encourage you all to get involved next year: Submit a proposal to give a presentation at our 2001 Conference. |
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By Cheryl Hansen . Weber State Unversity |
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The 2000 ACTFL Delegate
Assembly met on November 16 in Boston, Massachusetts. The order of the
day was to dis-cuss ACTFL K-12 Performance Guidelines and performance assessment.
The first presentation on the agenda was titled "Alphabet Soup," and the
speakers gave us a lesson on what the letters stand for in the acronyms
important to our organizations, such as PAU's, NAEP, NCATE, INTASC, NBPTS.
How savvy you are with acro-nyms? Before this meeting, they were alphabet
soup to me.
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Performance will be evaluated on how well the student understands and
can be understood.
In May, 2000 the NCATE Unit Accreditation Board adopted unit standards that will be required for all accreditation visits to university teacher-preparation programs, beginning in fall 2001. The conceptual framework(s) establishes the shared vision for a unit's efforts in preparing educators to work effectively in P-12 schools. It provides direction for programs, courses, teaching, candidate performance, scholarship, service and unit accountability. The conceptual framework(s) is knowledge-based, articulated, shared, coherent, consistent with the unit and/or institutional mission, and continuously evaluated (NCATE 2000 Standards: May 11, 2000). NCATE unit standards are performance-based and focus on what teacher candidates should know and be able to do. Institutions are also required to show candidate performance data. This is a radical departure from the former inputbased system. NCATE 2000 Unit Standards can be reviewed at www.ncate.org. The Utah State Office of Education is not yet a participating member of INTASC so Utah teachers work directly with the state for certification. INTASC is the national organization responsible for setting standards for teacher certification and they work directly with NCATE. More information about INTASC can be found at www.ccsso.org/intasc. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards works with NCATE to insure that teachers are meeting their standards that were developed in response to five major propositions:
This was my first year as Utah's delegate to the Assembly, and I came away from the meeting with a better understanding of ACTFL Performance Guidelines, Standards, and how all of the above organizations join together to make a great alphabet soup. |
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Alan Meredith, professor
of Spanish at BYU, and our president-elect, is in charge of receiving nominations
for this year's Teacher-of-the-Year. Any foreign language teacher in the
state can be eligible. The nomination form can be found at:
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By Joan D. Patterson |
| Every two years, my secretary
and I collect junior high and senior high foreign language enrollment information
by mailing out a survey form to each school in the state to be completed
on October 1 and mailed back.
This year, we were able to compile data from the survey by December 15–which is a record! Several of the foreign language supervisors submitted data for all the schools in their district. James Schindler, Jordan District, submitted his data on a disk–which simplified our task enormously. I thank all of you who provided information for this survey. This chart, which reflects enrollment trends, includes a selection of information collected by Dr. Elliott Howe up to 1987 and by me after that year. The pie charts show the same information with percentages rather than individual students. 
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The Pat Buckner Award . . . Collaboration in Teaching Projects |
| The Utah Foreign Language Association has established an annual grant of $500 to stimulate collaborative work among teachers. It is hoped that this award will facilitate collaboration between two or more language teachers in the same department, school, or in different schools, districts or across the state. This grant is in addition to the three UFLA Vitality Awards that are granted each year. The deadline for application for all UFLA grants is April 15, 2001. Information is available at www.ulfa.org or call Cheryl Hansen at (801) 626-7912. |
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By Gerlinde Braunberger . President AATG Utah |
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| The annual AATG-UTAH Spring Im-mersion
Weekend will be held at the Salt Lake Community College (Redwood Cen-ter)
-- 4600 So. Redwood Rd. (1700 West).
Topic: Emphasis will be placed on
helping students to become independent language learners. (The learner
learns to learn: the students experience their own learning process. Early
on they practice systematic learning and become independent German learners).
Strategies and ideas one can be used in the classroom on Monday.
Firday, March 2nd
6:00-8:00 p.m. Gemütlicher Abend mit Essen und music Bonus: learn Ger-man social/folk dances for your classes. Saturday, March 3rd
9:00 - 12:30 p.m. Workshop: Jesse McGuire "SoWieSo LERNEN SIE GERN DEUTSCH"
Housing: Hawthorn Inn & Suite, 3540 So. 2200 West (West Valley)
Registration: Enclose the (2) checks and send them to the following
address:
Must be postmarked by February 24, 2001. (Free overnight accommodations are available for teachers who live more
than 100 miles from SLC, as is reimbursement for mileage for those who
car-pool in groups of 3 or more).
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Summer Seminar for School Teachers |
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| This summer John Rosenberg will direct a summer
seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the Hu-manities for school
teachers.
"Four Hundred Years of Spanish History Through the Theater of Antonio Buero Vallejo" (in Spanish) July 9-August 3, 2001 (4 weeks) John R. Rosenberg,
(801) 378-9797
Stipend: $2800 A seminar for school teachers en-ables fifteen participants to explore
a topic or set of readings with a scholar having special interest and expertise
in the field. The core material of the semi-nar need not relate directly
to the school curriculum; the principal goal of the seminar is to engage
teachers in the scholarly enterprise and to expand and deepen their understanding
of the humanities through reading, discus-sion, writing, and reflection.
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